SEOh My F**cking God!

SEO Status Report Metrics

Agenda information here.

How are your SEO efforts going from a technical standpoint? This session looks at “status report” metrics you can tap into such as link counts, page counts and more.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Q&A Moderator: Todd Friesen, President, Oilman SEO

Speakers:

Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor, Inc.
Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz
Brian Klais, Executive Vice President of Search, Netconcepts
Kelly Kochert, Assistant Vice President New Media, NSI

This session was sponsored by Inquisit software. Many of the panelists had good things to say about Inquisit, so it might be worth checking out.

Seth Besmertnik:

• The top 4 SEO reporting myths:
  • Every keyword is equally important.
  • All potential keywords are accounted for and known.
  • Movement outside the first page doesn’t matter.
  • Education = buy-in.
• Far more clicks take place from natural SERP listings, but the majority of total online spend is in PPC.
• Chasing rankings as a “killer metric” is counter productive, but it can provide insight. Rankings can be a good way to measure how you stack up against competitors.
• SEO “snippet” optimization (”snippets” being the text - usually the meta description tag - that appears below the page’s title on SERPs). If your ranking is already secured or if you can afford to mess with your page’s rankings without reprecussion), do some A/B testing for click-through.
• Examine where where the traffic is coming from in paid versus natural search.
• “Destination and Traffic Modified Movement” is a formula developed by Conductor to provide more insight into ranking data. They take available metrics and go one step further to uncover more meaningful data.

Rand Fishkin:

• The SEO guesswork game is over. It’s time for solid, data-driven metrics.
• Compete, Alexa, and Quantcast all provide publicly availabe data. Quantcast’s “Quantified” metric is like Google Analytics but public. Compare these numbers against Alexa and Compete for confidence levels.
• For U.S. traffic, Compete’s data is the most accurate.
• For worldwide traffic, Alexa’s “3 month reach” is the most accurate.
• For all link data that has been collected, how do they stack up against one another? Which are most accurrate and how can we determine what the real data is (versus noise)?
• Never trust a single metric. Always compare.
• If all metrics appear virtually the same, there are good ways to dive deeper into the data.
• When metrics get mashed, expect better results.
• What are the factors that best predict google rankings?
  • Links, by far (85%).
  • URL (10%).
  • Page content (5%).

Kelly Kochert:

• Remember that since it will likely take more than one analytics solution to get the data that you need, be absolutely certain that you know what you wish to measure want beforehand.
• Identify what moved the needle for any metric and benchmark traffic graphs with indications of when each tactic was implemented.
• Align keyword traffic with ranking. Split out keywords into branded vs. non branded buckets. You should always rank for branded keywords, so it’s not worth spending a lot of time working on them (unless there is an obvious problem that is preventing them for ranking). But the should still be tracked.
• Look at entry pages for organic traffic, and align them with keywords. Are these really the pages that are driving the traffic into the site? What are the top performing landing pages? Are opportunities being missed?
• Site engagement:
  • Measure bounce rates, exit pages, etc. Why are people abandoning? If so, that page should be a priority for improvement.
  • Which pages and keywords lead to conversions?
  • Identify the common funnel. Is SEO different than paid search?
• Referral sites:
  • What other sites drive traffic?
  • Look for link opportunities and where anchor text can be changed.
• Mine internal search data. There are software solutions that specialize in just this.

Brian Klais:

• The session started with the questions, “How many here are SEOs? Now how many of you feel that you are paid what you are worth.” This kick started the theme that SEO tends to be grossly undervalued. And why? Because the metrics used to create reporting, ROI, and perceived value have been weak in the past.
• Stop talking SEO tactics and start talking performance metrics. This is how SEM does it, and it makes a lot more sense.
• How to communicate opportunity? Use the google adwords keyword tool (using “exact match”). Don’t use Wordtracker for this. You can build models based on this data.
• Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery are good for finding new keywords, but don’t use them for looking at existing opportunities.
• Use CTR to set goals and estimate traffic.
• Traffic acquisition cost: Compare PPC cost vs. anticipated organic costs, and then set goals to reduce this cost.
• Landing page yield: Understand how many total landing pages are available. What is getting crawled? What total percentage are actually driving traffic? Look at YoY and MoM data to eliminate interfering market trends.
• Landing page rankings: Calculate value of rankings and measure CPC.
• Keyword coverage: Focus on non-brand phrases.
• Incremental traffic and revenue: You cannot assume that non-branded rankings will stay constant. Always examine the YoY delta in as many areas as possible.
• Proper attribution: The final click that causes the conversion is likely to be credited to PPC. Set up sessions and cookies to track the path to the final click.
• ROI, (or return on ad spend): This is what is ultimately going to prove your worth as an SEO. Look beyond short-term revenue and measure all available metrics. Include the lifetime value of customer/searcher/visitor, etc.

-Drew

Tags: Brian Klais, Kelly Kochert, rand fishkin, SEO reporting, SMX Santa Clara, SMX West 2009